On turkey hormones

Maybe it’s the wacky weather, but our tom turkey has hit sexual maturity. (Re: weather. The less said the better, as I would rather not jinx us, but let’s sum up by saying 1* to 63* in 4 days, and all 18 inches of snow is now melted and has moved through our basement.)

Is it all the sun? He has been practicing the traditional pose for about a month off and on (mostly off) but his “on” switch appears to be thrown, and stuck. As I blearily did critter chores pre-coffee this morning, I kept hearing this noise. Pft. Pause. Pfftt. I realized it was the tom. Apparently, he needs to suck in some air to fluff up! Such…puffery!

9 responses to “On turkey hormones”

Has your turkey gotten aggressive since he became a studmuffin? I’m heading toward turkey gathering in the spring, but I’ve heard a few stories that have me a bit apprehensive. Your fellow is spectacular, but I think females might be a safer choice to put with my goose. My only male peep has been nutty from the first day. You’ll be surprised to hear that I call him Sandwich when he is having a particularly annoying day.

Josephine was a turkey. She responded to her name and purred (not other word) when petted. She ate like 3. My parents wanted to breed her. They got a male – Napoleon, of course. She would have nothing to do with him. Nothing. She was not even such a good layer, so we did not even get a lot of eggs out of her.

My parents really wanted geese and were trying to breed a pair. And finally, it looked like everything went right, and mother goose was laying and staying on top of the eggs. But the eggs kept disappearing. Blame the cats, blame the dogs… until Josephine was caught in the act of eating the goose eggs.

That was the end. It took 6 months in the freezer to forget that THAT bird was Josephine…

What beautiful turkeys! We loved our turkeys this year. So sweet and… yummy too. Anyways, I’ve searched through your archives and can’t seem to find where you got those beauties. We were thinking we wanted some Bourbon Reds. What a handsome fella you have!

Hah, Ang, I was glad to see Jake was doing it as well. We got some snow last night so we’ll have to see if it cools his ardor at all (it’d cool mine: it’s cold out there.) And today was only a one-egg day so I think I’m going to miss out there too…

Pamela, well, he chases the dog around but she asks for it (literally: chasemechaseme!). He’s still as sweet as ever to me and the child, but then they were hand-raised, which I am sure helps. But yes the hen is nicer. I love the geese too: no aggression there either though they are a bit less social than they used to be. But yes, that must be an annoying roo if YOU call him “sandwich”!

Linda, well damn that’s too bad. If you go to Dave’s Garden Watchdog and put in the variety you can find who sells the Bird Egg beans: they’re around, I have seen them in at least 4 catalogs.

Shelly, hah! She’s fine. He isn’t…doing it yet, he’s just being puffy and pftty. She just as easily could have been flying out to eat some grass: it was actually visible here for a few days.

Sylvie, that is a great story. I know there’s something triggered if the girls are raised alone that they’ll never really warm up to a guy’s affections. But what a booger, eating those eggs. It would take me a while too. Our girl purrs too, and just “talks” all the time like some of my favorite (bossier) chickens do. Here’s crossing my fingers that neither the geese nor the turkeys become egg eaters because they live together! This spring we’re building separate nest structures so we’ll see.

Hi Kim. Yeah, I need to update my tabs above; I thought I would do it on the long weekend above to include things like new farms and places like the hatchery. I got them from Privett Hatchery in New Mexico: I also got the geese and the last batch of meat birds, which I was especially pleased with. They were really great, really chicken-y in their habits and had no health problems. My daughter got me to spare one (Chicken Patty) and she is the sweetest if largest bird we have. So yes I would definitely recommend them.

Doncha just love them! There’s nothing more beautiful—I so understand Franklin’s desire to make them the national bird.

Interestingly enough, my hens are by far more aggressive than my toms. Not to us, but to each other and other animals. The only animals we have that are aggressive towards us are the ding-dang geese with whom I have a love/ hate relationship. They have one more spring to make themselves useful….

Wow, Danielle, who knew the hens could be aggressive? Our girl is sweet as molasses and just as sticky if you get near her 😉 Are yours African or Chinese geese? I’ve heard those two kinds are fairly territorial. Ours are just big babies, frankly. They’re also pretty chubby (as is the breed) but they can fly fairly well, which is kind of surprising to see.

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Wisdom from the sage

Wendell Berry:

"We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it."
--from an essay in "The Long-Legged House"

"The word agriculture, after all, does not mean "agriscience," much less "agribusiness." It means "cultivation of land." And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both "to revolve" and "to dwell." To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle. It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term "agribusiness."

"Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating."
--both the above are from essays in "The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays"

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